


no one else matters

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cousin Incest, F/M, There's like mentions of sex and nudity but thats it, for like 1/5 of the story, the arya/gendry is a side pairing that is focused on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4132008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The five times other people noticed the strong bond the two cousins had, and the one time they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no one else matters

**1: Catelyn**  
Arya is five years old, always crawling and climbing and moving. Catelyn could tell from the very first day that this daughter was going to be nothing like Sansa and more like her brothers, more like her cousin. She was the only child who took after her father, dark hair and grey eyes opposed to light hair and thinner faces. (This was not including Jon - but then again, Catelyn rarely included the boy.)

Catelyn is braiding Sansa’s hair in the living room, humming a tune she vaguely remembers from her childhood, when Arya bursts in the door, teary-eyed. Robb follows her with a look of guilt on his face, obviously expected to be the smart one in this situation.

“Arya, honey, what’s wrong?” Catelyn asks, pausing the braiding to look over her daughter. The mother’s eyes trail down to the dirt that covers her dress and legs, and there is so much dirt that she can barely make out the blood running down her lower legs, indicating skinned knees.

Robb is the one who answers, while Arya wipes at her eyes in an attempt to hide the tears. “It was my fault, Mom, I swear. I wasn’t watching her close enough and she tripped and fell.”

“It’s not your fault, dear,” Catelyn promises warmly, though she narrows in on Arya. “Listen, Arya, you got to be more careful, okay? That’s another dress ruined! Here, how about I run you a bath and . . .”

Except Arya was staring at someone behind her who certainly was not there a minute ago, and even though her knees hurt with every step, she ran to ten-year-old Jon, who had just entered the room, confused at what was happening. She shrieks his name and propels herself into his arms, and he drops to his knees so he can catch her, wrapping her up into a hug.

“Hey, princess! What happened to you?” Jon asks, tucking a hair behind her ear. Catelyn distantly notices that her daughter is no longer crying, and that Jon now has mud on his once-white collar shirt. He doesn’t mind.

“I skinned my knees, Robb says. ‘Cause I tripped and got all muddy!” Arya gestures to her wounds, pouting.

“Oh, no! But you’re a strong one, hm?” Arya nods along to her cousin’s words, her right hand tangled in the back of his hair, almost as a sign of comfort. “Hey, how about you let your mom give you a bath and then we can watch some TV? Your choice this time, yeah?”

“Huh, okay,” Arya agrees easily, much easier than if Catelyn ever tried to get her to take a bath by herself, (usually it ends with an angry Arya being dragged) and plants a kiss on Jon’s nose before squirming out of his arms and walking past him to go to the bathroom. Catelyn, in awe, has to follow, giving Jon a grateful smile for the first time in a long time.

As she rinses the mud off of Arya’s calves, she wonders how long ago Jon had become Arya’s favorite.

**2: Robb**

Robb and Jon don’t have sleepovers often, living in the same house and all. But every so often, the two will camp out in either the living room or one of their bedrooms and marathon a video game until the early hours of the morning. In all honesty, Jon felt more like a close friend than a relative, and Robb was thankful for that.

The seventeen-year-old woke up on the grey leather couch in his living room, stretching his legs out before getting comfortable with his new position. With one look out the windows, it was easy to see that it was not the daylight that had woken him up. In fact, his phone read 4:53, about two hours after they had even gone to bed. So why was he up?

Two voices flooded in from the other end of the room, both soft so Robb could barely hear them. They almost sounded like they were trying their hardest not to wake him up, so they must not have noticed his moving around. _Oh, how that worked out_ , Robb thinks, almost grieving his sleep.

“Do you want to talk about it?” That’s Jon’s voice, gentle and comforting as ever. Jon always had a knack for soothing friends and family that Robb envies but had not picked up himself yet.

“No,” a feminine voice whispers, and through the cracks in his eyelids the teen can see his little sister Arya grip Jon’s sleeve. “It - It was of Dad, again. I wish it hadn’t - hadn’t happened like that. I feel like - like someone took out a piece of me.” The emotion with Arya’s words hit Robb like a slap in the face. Two months since their dad had been killed, little evidence of who had done it.

“I know it hurts, princess,” Jon replies gently, hand moving from her shoulder to her back and pulling her close. Her skinny arms wrap around his neck and she buries her head in his shoulder. _If anybody else called her that pet name, she’d skin them._ But Jon is different. Jon has always been different for Arya, and probably always will be. “And you might always live with it, that hole in your chest. But you learn, and you grow, and you accept it and heal. I can help you with all of that, Arya, I swear.”

“Oh, Jon,” she mumbles into his shoulder, crying evident even though her voice itself was greatly muffled.

Robb feels like he is intruding on something far too private and intimate, something he should not be witnessing. This is Arya’s first word being _cousin_ , her favorite bedtime stories being the ones Jon made up on the spot. This is Jon being the only one to soothe her after skinned knees and fifth-grade bullies. Robb remembers seeing the kid who had called Arya a bitch at the grocery store, and Jon, who was afraid of talking to strangers, was the one who had talked to his mother. _Do you know what your son’s been saying to my cousin?_

Jon musses Arya’s hair, pressing his lips against her forehead in a gentle motion. “Do you want me to stay with you until you fall asleep again, Arya? It s no trouble, you know.” The eleven-year-old hesitates, weighing the pros and cons in her head before nodding and slipping her smaller hand into his. She’s calmed down severely now, the only giveaway that she’s anything other than stable is the labored breathing that expels from her lungs.

_She’ll be okay_ , Robb thinks, curling up with his blanket and watching them disappear from the room before closing his eyes. _Jon’s her home, and he’ll protect her._

**3: Sansa**

“Sansa, Sansa, please,” Arya’s begging, hands clasped together. “Just this once, I’ll never ask again. You used to love doing this, come on!”

Sansa frowns. “It’s not that I don’t want to, and I will, but, like, why? Who are you trying to impress?” Sansa had only given Arya two makeovers before, back when Sansa was in junior high and Arya was oblivious to anything feminine. 

Arya grinned. “Yes, yes, thank you so much, oh my God.” Sansa’s question seems to have slipped Arya’s mind, and since her younger sister seems so excited Sansa lets it go.

“Just, hm, sit on my bed, I’ll go get my makeup.” The redhead rummaged through her drawers until she found her makeup bag, turning towards Arya. “Are you sure? Most of this won’t come off in time for the dinner, just so you know.”

“Yes, I know, Sansa,” Arya replied, sounding impatient but not meaning to be unkind. “It’s just - it’s Jon’s eighteenth birthday! That’s a big thing, right?”

“I suppose,” Sansa agreed. She had not been as close to her cousin as the rest of her siblings were, but could easily understand why Arya loved Jon to such an extent. He was protective but never possessive, and Sansa could see that with an overbearing mother and siblings that wanted Arya to be something she wasn’t, Jon could be her solace. Sansa almost felt bad for the times she had pressured Arya to be more feminine, more pretty. She had already accepted a while ago that her younger sister was the textbook definition of the word “tomboy”. _Except for Jon’s birthday,_ Sansa thinks.

Sansa sits next to Arya on the bed, dumping out the contents of the bag beside them. “What do you want? Like, do you want me to put on eyeliner, or do you want to look more natural?”

Arya hesitates, hands brushing over the cosmetics that she had rarely touched upon before. “I don’t know, whatever you want? I guess, like, I’m not trying, but I still look pretty.”

“You always look pretty,” Sansa says automatically, reaching down for the foundation to see if it would fit Arya’s skin tone.

“That’s not true,” Arya argues. “I’m intense, and I scare people. That’s not pretty, that’s just intimidating.”

Sansa bit her lip in frustration at her sister’s blunt obliviousness as she blended the liquid foundation in the thirteen-year-old’s skin. “No, I mean, you’re confident. Boys like confidence, you know. Alright, I’m gonna need you to look up, alright? And try not to flinch too much.”

“I suppose,” Arya says hesitantly, before scoffing at Sansa’s next words. “Yeah, right, just put a _pencil_ near my eyeball and I won’t flinch. You got it.” Despite the sarcasm, Sansa managed to apply eyeliner without too much hassle. By the end, Sansa had someone who resembled her sister somewhat beaming at her. 

Arya got up to leave, but Sansa held onto her wrist gently, turning the attention towards her. “Not that I mind, but, why are you asking me to do your makeup? You don’t like makeup. I know I used to pressure you to try girly things, and I’m sorry, but if something happened that made you want to change somehow . . .” The fifteen-year-old remembered a slightly younger Arya coming home with a split lip and an angry glare in her eyes, all due to rude words spat at her at school. What if they had bullied her about being masculine?

Except this was not the case. Arya just smiled faintly at her, and said, “It’s Jon’s birthday.”

Sansa didn’t understand right away, but she might have gotten a slight idea when throughout Jon’s celebratory dinner, both Arya and Jon only paid attention to each other.

**4: Gendry**

Gendry is close friends with Jon and Robb, which makes all of this so much worse. Being two years younger than the other boys and three years older than Arya makes him get along with all of them, even flirting with Arya shamelessly at some points. However, he did not expect that once Jon and Robb left for college he would be falling for the Stark that could put up with him the most - Arya. 

The two have been hanging out more and more frequently, Gendry offering to give her rides home every day so she would not have to depend on the unreliability of her sister being able to drive her. Often, they go to a coffee shop or a fast food restaurant and just speak of whatever was on their minds. However, all that it is is platonic. And Gendry was totally going to change that.

He grips the rose in his hand with much more force than necessary, looking at her from across the hallway. She’s fumbling with her Geometry textbook, trying to shove everything in so her infamously messy locker does not spill across the floor. Gendry makes his way over to her, and when she slams her locker shut, he’s there, grinning at her like she is the sun and the stars.

“Hi, Gendry,” she says, as if he had not just appeared out of nowhere and he is not clutching a flower so hard his knuckles are turning white. “Whatcha got there?”

“Oh, this, um, well, it’s a rose. For you.” His cheeks are as red as the object in his hand, and if she is surprised (which he doubts she is) she masks it as she gently pries the rose from his grasp.

“Aw, thank you, Gendry. That’s sweet of you.”

_This is it. Now or never. 20 seconds of courage, starting now._

“Will you go on a date with me?” When she doesn’t respond immediately, he continues. “I mean, I know we hang out all the time, but it hasn’t been like, a proper date. I want to take you on a proper date! We can be all cheesy and go to fancy restaurants and beaches if you want. Or just continue as normal but with more significance? Look, maybe I shouldn’t have - ”

“Sure,” Arya agrees, beaming. “Friday night?”

“Yeah, yeah, sounds great. Six?” Gendry feels ecstatic, smiling brightly. “Do you need help carrying your textbooks to my car, or you got it?”

Arya laughs. “I got it, Gendry. Thanks for being a doll, though.”

He’s not in love with her, but he sure as hell is in love with the way she laughs.

———

School had just let out for the year the day before when Gendry gets the call he’s been dreading. Arya’s lying next to him, sleeping peacefully as his comforter barely covers her chest. When his phone starts to buzz, he swears at the display name and gently gets to his feet, careful not to wake the girl sleeping next to him as he exits his bedroom and accepts the call.

“Hello?”

“You have ten seconds to tell me it’s not true,” Jon demands, voice uncharacteristically icy.

“Um, what’s not true?” Gendry asks, face paling. This is not how this call was supposed to go. Any hope that Jon had been talking about something else is now gone. Robb had texted the eighteen-year-old two weeks back, saying that he would be “keeping an eye” on him but otherwise approving. But Gendry knew how close Arya and Jon were, which was mainly the reason Jon had not known about this until recently.

“You are _not_ fucking my underage cousin.” 

Shit.

“Listen, Jon - it’s not like we’re just having sex, alright? I take her out for dates, she gets gifts, I care for her a lot, yeah?” Gendry realizes that was probably not the best thing to say, but at least it wasn’t the worst.

“So you are having sex with her, great. Should I remind you that she’s fifteen? And you’re _eighteen_? You’re a legal adult and she’s a - she’s a fucking sophomore!” Gendry winces.

“Yes, yes, I know, I just - ” He’s cut off mid sentence.

“Gendry, what are you . . .” Arya, who had _somehow_ appeared behind him, completely naked but beautiful as ever, breaks through her sentence halfway through to let out a sleepy yawn. “. . . doing? Who are you talking to?”

Oh, if only Jon had not heard her voice.

“Gendry, Gendry,” he snaps, voice doubling with an anger Gendry did not know Jon possessed. “Is she there? _What the fuck?_ It’s nine in the fucking morning! Did she sleep over? Oh my God, tell me Catelyn did not let you two have a damn sleepover. Let me talk to her. Now.”

The eighteen-year-old freezes, looking at Arya with a shy smile. He pulls the phone slightly away from his ear and says “it’s Jon. He wants to talk to you.” Lowering his voice, he adds, “Do you want me to say you’re not here?”

Arya smiles affectionately, pressing her lips to Gendry’s cheek gently. “He already knows I’m here, silly. Can I see the phone?” He hands it to her, and she presses it to her ear while he stares at her in admiration. “Hello? Hi, Jon! How are you? Oh, I’m great, thank you. Gendry? Yeah, I’m with Gendry. Hm, sex? That’s a thing, yes. Look, Jon, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, alright? I know you would want to know - yes, yes, I know, shut up, I’m talking. But which one of us didn’t tell the other about going to college in California? Yeah, yeah. I get it. Alright, bye, Jon.” With that, she promptly hangs up, and then hands the phone back to Gendry.

“So, what do you want to do today?” She asks, and Gendry can almost allow himself to forget about Jon.

They end up breaking up at the end of the summer when Gendry gets a full athletic scholarship to a school across the country. They end on good terms, and Arya cries, but it’s for the best. He didn’t really want to deal with never being friends with Jon again, anyway.

**5: Ygritte**

Ygritte has gone on so many blind dates in the past month she is about to die.

Ever since she had accidentally set Gilly up with the kind Education major Sam, she had been giving up every Friday and Saturday night since. Gilly had even gone to the extent of trying to set her up with a man twice her age, a woman who had fifteen geckos, and a man who liked to describe his love for camouflage clothing in great detail.

However, twenty minutes into this date, and things are almost going decently. 

His name is Jon Targaryen, and he is quite possibly the prettiest boy she has seen on her endeavors so far. He makes her laugh with the way he describes getting his pants pulled down in front of his whole freshman year, makes her aw when he tells of hiding in his treehouse for an evening because his aunt told him off for something he still believes was not his fault. This might as well be the first date in a long time that might have a follow up.

“So, Jon Targaryen, tell me of your family,” she says, smirking at the question that she believes will make him slightly uncomfortable. “Siblings, cousins, kids?”

He laughs, seemingly expecting it. “Alright, alright. Hm, let’s see. I was raised by my aunt and uncle, and they have five kids. My aunt and uncle have both passed away in the past few years, and we think they were killed, actually.” Ygritte’s eyes widen, wondering what the fuck had she done, and is about to either apologize or call him out on his bullshit when she sees how genuine his eyes are but he also seems very calm about it, so she mumbles her condolences though lets him continue speaking.

“Let’s see - five cousins, right. They’re basically my siblings, considering how close we are. Okay, in order of birth: Robb’s a year older than me, and he’s, like, Jesus because he never does anything wrong. Sansa, she’s very ladylike, you know, makeup and fancy dresses. Arya - well, Arya reminds me of you, actually. She defends herself, she’s sassy, you know the type. Bran’s a good student, all A’s and could beat me at any video or board game he wanted. Rickon’s the youngest, he’s just starting high school, shy at first but once you get to know him he’s like, overly loud, you know?”

“Yeah,” Ygritte agrees, paying attention to this man who seems to have lost everything but still keeps a head up. “You still have three kids in high school, right? Do you still all live together, like, are you their legal guardians?”

“Robb and Sansa still live in our childhood home, and will probably live there until the kids grow up. I have an apartment that’s about a three minute drive away, so I’m there if they need me.” Jon nods along with what he’s saying, before taking a sip of his beer. 

“You said that your cousin, Arya, was it? - reminded you of me. How so?” Ygritte is aware that this might be considered prying, but she’s curious.

“Arya . . . she’s very big on self defense. Ever since her mom died, she goes to frequent fencing lessons. You said you like archery, right? Yeah. She has about half a dozen concealed knives on her person at all times just in case anyone tries to fuck with her, y’know, she’s tough.” There’s a sudden admiration in his eyes that Ygritte can identify easily but she knows he can’t yet. “Once, I remember, some kid had been making some rather inappropriate comments about her, about her body and stuff like that. She texted me in the middle of the day complaining, and I ended up waiting in the parking lot so I could talk some sense into him, scare him a little. I wasn’t expecting him to come out beat to shit, and she wore her black eye with so much pride that I took her out for ice cream.”

The conversation ends up changing from Arya to Ygritte’s family, so she gives Jon the brief run-down. Distant parents, independency. _He’s good listener,_ she realizes. He would almost be the perfect man. Almost.

The date goes much better than Ygritte had initially expected. He agrees easily when she wants to pay half, they have similar music tastes, and he gets her sarcastic humor. However, at the end of the day, he doesn’t give her his number, and she wouldn’t have used it anyway.

When she gets home to her roommate, she shouts “He’s in love with someone else!” into the currently in-use bathroom. Gilly _aww _’s through the door.__

__**+1: Jon** _ _

__They have a party for Arya’s return from freshman year of college the Saturday after she comes back. Jon barely leaves her side, and for the first time in his life he is afraid that she’ll turn him away, but she never does. She seems a bit distant, but she still laughs at all of his jokes and beats him at Mario Kart. They’re still the closest out of anybody._ _

__Jon’s chatting with Sam about his girlfriend who Jon has yet to meet when he sees Arya slip out the back door, arms crossed too tightly to be comfortable and a frown on her face. Giving Sam a pat on the shoulder, he excuses himself and follows her._ _

__He follows the path behind their house that nobody would go through, knowing his cousin well enough to know that’s where she is. And he’s right, of course - she’s sitting on a rock with a beer in her hand, taking the occasional drink._ _

__“You okay, princess?” He asks softly, arm gently falling down to her shoulder._ _

__She looks up at him, and for the first time in a long time there are tears in her eyes, which she wipes at nonchalantly. “Yeah I’m fine, I just, I don’t know. I feel like I’m growing up, and it - it scares me. I want to face it head on, like I do with, well, everything, but maybe I didn’t have enough time to be a kid.” She says it so easily, like she never even thought about keeping anything concealed around him. Jon always loved that about the relationship they had. No matter what they never told other people they could tell each other. (Jon was still keeping the secret of Arya being the one who broke Sansa’s mirror from when she was ten.)_ _

__“It’s okay to be scared,” he says, sitting beside her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Everyone’s scared of something. Growing up is the most terrifying and the most satisfying thing you will ever experience, you know. You’ll meet new people, try new things, it’ll be great, only if you let it. You’re right, you didn’t get enough time to be a kid, and I am so, so, so sorry that that was robbed from you. If I could, I would restart time to make everything better.”_ _

“Except that’s not how it works,” Arya says quietly, leaning into Jon’s embrace so his face fits perfectly leaning against her hair. “Thank you.” He whispers a _you’re welcome_ into her locks, and a comfortable silence ensues. 

__“Hey, Jon?” His little cousin asks, curious eyes peering at him. He lifts his head and gazes back, a light smile on his face._ _

__“What are you afraid of? You said that everyone’s afraid of something, so it applies to you.”_ _

__Without thinking, Jon’s afraid of a lot of things. Getting fired, obtaining a bad reputation, petty things like that were on Jon’s mind. But there was one thing that never left his mind._ _

__“I’m afraid of losing you,” he admits, watching the subtle surprise register on her face. “I mean it. You’re growing older, and someday you’re gonna leave home and find someone you’ll love more than anyone, and we’ll lose this . . . this connection, and we won’t see each other anymore. Oh my God, Arya, you’re everything to me.”_ _

__There’s a moment of silence, before - “huh.”_ _

__“What?”_ _

__“This is the first time I’ve ever kept anything from you for this long, and I can’t do it anymore.” Arya sounds nervous, like she has the secrets of the world wrapped in her mind._ _

__“What is it?” Jon asks, rubbing circles into her left shoulder with his fingers. For a second, she leans her face towards his, but pauses._ _

__Closing her eyes and looking in the opposite direction, she says, “I love you.”_ _

Jon blinks. _What_. He can see each and every meaning under the word, hidden and secretive but so open to him. For the few longest seconds of Jon’s life, he hesitates before answering. “I love you, too,” he says softly, meaning the world behind the sentence but he can tell she doesn’t understand. 

__“No, you don’t. Jon, I’m, fuck, I’m _in love with you_.”_ _

__He brings a hand to her cheek, turning her so she’s facing him again. Her eyes fly open, embarrassment and regret shining through. So, of course, he does the only thing he can to make that look in her eyes go away._ _

__Jon brings his lips to hers softly. He kisses Arya like he’ll never kiss her again, hand still caressing her cheek and she tastes like raspberry and beer, which should not go together but oh, it does. For once in Arya’s life she is gentle, her hands folding neatly at the back of his neck. The arms that was once around her shoulders has now found its way down her back, pressed tightly against her spine._ _

__“I love you,” he breathes out when they break the kiss. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”_ _

__“Show me,” she says, lips moving towards his again._ _

__So, he does._ _

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you enjoyed that! Here are the ages, if you were wondering:
> 
> robb: (arya 11 - jon 16)  
> sansa: (arya 13 - jon 17/18)  
> gendry: (arya 15 - jon 20)  
> ygritte: (arya 17 - jon 22)  
> +1: (arya 18 - jon 23)


End file.
